The Therapeutic Revolution: Medicine, Meaning, and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

The approach of the medical profession toward therapeutics changed during the 19th century. Initially the body was seen metaphorically as a system of dynamic interactions with its environment. Health or disease resulted from a cumulative interaction between constitutional endowment and environmental circumstance. Every part of the body was related inevitably and inextricably with every other. Finally, the body had to pass through developmental crises. Drugs were seen as adjusting the body''s internal equilibrium. The advocacy of a specific drug in treating a specific ill was considered quackery. Toward the end of the 19th century this natural-philosophic approach had given way to an outspoken therapeutic skepticism. Physicians, however, became keenly aware of the potential inconsistency between the demands of science and those of clinical practice.